The Sonos streaming box is coming, but I think wireless audio will surely be its key feature

Last year was the worst year for wireless speaker maker Sonos after it prematurely pushed out a new app that was broken and it’s only just managing to get on top of.

But it should have been a glorious year with a new Arc Ultra soundbar, Ace headphones and more launches planned.

One of those launches (which was seemingly postponed) is Pinewood – a name first suggested earlier last year. It now seems it will be with us in the next couple of months.

Sonos Pinewood (a codename) is a streaming box that’s a Fire TV Stick or Apple TV on steroids. designed for Sonos aficionados who want to Sonosize their entire TV setup.

Reports suggest it will support Gigabit Ethernet and Wi-Fi 7 while it will also be an HDMI switch. But the key feature will surely be the ability to create various Dolby Atmos speaker setups out of your Sonos speakers without necessarily being centred on a soundbar (though it sounds like you will be able to connect to that wirelessly too). That sounds a little a more specific version of Dolby Atmos Flex Connect. Another benefit? Binning off any problems with audio sync.

But in my opinion there are two huge potential problems – firstly, great streamers need great software. And because of Sonos’ app failure, it has destroyed the goodwill it had here. However, the interface for Pinewood is said to be “beautiful” according to The Verge’s Chris Welch.

It’s been suggested that its trump card is that it can pull together content from various platforms and use Sonos Voice Control to locate content. That’s fine, but unless Pinewood can offer something more it’s not going to be doing anything that isn’t offered by other systems such as Apple TV not to mention pay TV providers such as Sky UK’s Stream, Glass and Q platforms.

The second issue is that pricing being banded about suggests a price point somewhere shy of $400. Considering even the $129/£149 Apple TV 4K is expensive for a streaming device, that price point seems absolutely crazy unless it comes as part of a premium soundbar or has wizard-like capabilities. Welch suggests he has seen seen images of the product and that it looks like a flat-box streamer. So no included soundbar then. There is also expected to be a physical remote.

But even to make the passthrough HDMI Switch worth having, it will have to have a whole lot of ports – at least four I’d suggest, and all up to the HDMI 2.1 standard, like the $349/£300 Philips Hue Sync Box 8K.

But Pinewood’s key feature is surely going to be that aforementioned wireless audio capability. So if you could have Pinewood behind your TV, the soundbar could be elsewhere or at least, not need to be cabled. Even so, if Pinewood costs $400 that is surely going to be a difficult sell.

We should learn more very soon.

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Dan Grabham Editor-in-Chief

About

Dan is Editor-in-chief of Stuff, working across the magazine and the Stuff.tv website.  Our Editor-in-Chief is a regular at tech shows such as CES in Las Vegas, IFA in Berlin and Mobile World Congress in Barcelona as well as at other launches and events. He has been a CES Innovation Awards judge. Dan is completely platform agnostic and very at home using and writing about Windows, macOS, Android and iOS/iPadOS plus lots and lots of gadgets including audio and smart home gear, laptops and smartphones. He's also been interviewed and quoted in a wide variety of places including The Sun, BBC World Service, BBC News Online, BBC Radio 5Live, BBC Radio 4, Sky News Radio and BBC Local Radio.

Areas of expertise

Computing, mobile, audio, smart home